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 Have you ever wondered what are the best words or phrases to use on your resume? Did you ever stare at a job opening and say to yourself - I can do that! - only to later discover that you didn't even get an interview and the job offer went to someone else?
It's certainly no accident that some resumes are screened-out by recruiters, human resource persons and hiring managers. With the competition for finding a job today, they might receive hundreds of resumes for a single job opening - and they simply don't have time to read through all the resumes they receive.
Scanning for Keywords and Phrases
So what's the alternative if you're looking to hire someone and you've got a huge pile of resumes on your desk to read through? You need to scan the resumes, looking for certain key words or phrases that fit your job opening.
But as a job applicant, your on the other side of this story - you want your resume to be discovered. You want your resume to make it through the screening process. So how can you maximize your chances of your resume making it past this initial screen?
They key to success here is to accurately predict what keywords or phrases these screeners are looking for in the resumes they've received. Now that might sound hard to some, but it's really pretty easy.
Picking Keywords and Phrases for Your Resume
In fact, the hiring manager often gives us the exact word and / or phrases to include on your resume. The problem is that most of us simply ignore these obviously helpful hints. We know in our heads that we can do the job, but we fail to make sure our resumes reflect all of our relevant work experience.
So just how do we know we are a good candidate for a job opening? We read through the job description and say to ourselves - I can do that! We know we're a good job candidate because we're able to pick out the keywords subconsciously from the job description. Our process of discovering key words to place on your resume simply involves moving that subconscious information over to your writen resume.
Discovering Resume Keyword Examples
To see just how this process works, let's run through some examples. Listed below we've got five different job descriptions that were actually posted on the Internet. In each example, we're going to highlight the keywords in the job description.
Example 1 - Nurse Practitioner
Nurse Practitioner, Psychiatry. Must have experience with a Medicaid population and be familiar with psychiatric medications. This position requires that you evaluate patients and follow up with medication management. Psychotherapy is referred out.
The hours for this position are flexible, but will generally be during normal business hours. No weekend or on-call schedule is required. This may be a part-time or full-time position as an employee or contract worker status.
So if you were to apply for this nurse practitioner position, you'd want to make sure that any experience you had with respect to Medicaid, psychiatric medications, evaluation of patients and medication management is mentioned on your resume. This can be part of your prior work experience or in the skills section of the resume.
Example 2 - Electro-Mechanical Project Engineer
Major manufacturer of fire protection and control systems seeks an electro-mechanical engineer to lead its new product development activities. Strong electro-mechanical experience, valves, solenoids, rotary and linear actuators product design background also required. Position offers a leadership role and offers a very competitive salary and benefit program.
In this example, the job application would be sure to include key words describing experience related to product development and design. Note that each of these two examples tells you that a particular skill or experience is required. That's a strong indicator these keywords will be used to screen applicants.
Example 3 - Junior Accountant
Growing Headquarters of established industry leader seeks accountant with 0-5 year's experience: Qualified individual provides financial information by maintaining and reconciling accounts; preparing reports. Duties include: Maintains financial records for subsidiary companies by analyzing balance sheets and general ledger accounts. Reconciles general and subsidiary bank accounts by gathering and balancing information. Provides financial status information by preparing special reports; completing special projects.
Applying for this Junior accountant position means you need to include work experience related to preparing accounting reports, reconciling account and analyzing the balance sheet right on your resume. Once again, omitting these key words from your resume means you're going to be screened out and lose out on getting a job interview.
Example 4 - Financial Manager
Reporting to the President, the Finance Manager will be a true business partner to the President and will positively affect all aspects of the business. These areas include but are not limited to strategy, operations, information technology, productivity, and all major initiatives. This position requires high levels of interaction with all other team members.
More specifically, this position will be responsible for the hands-on management, administration, and coordination of all financial and accounting activities for the company. These activities include financial reporting, cash management, accounts receivable, inventory control, accounts payable, cost accounting, budgeting, and financial planning and analysis. This individual must establish strong cost, capital expenditures, and working capital controls.
This financial manger opening is full of keywords that need to appear on a resume. The activities indicate what the financial manager will be asked to do each day and the types of reports they will need to prepare in this particular job. More importantly, is the phrase "requires high levels of interaction with all other team members." No doubt, those involved with the screening of resumes for this job will be looking for team-building skills and work experience in a team setting on your resume.
Example 5 - Paralegal / Legal Secretary
Legal secretary with at least 2 years of experience needed for busy litigation law firm. All applicants applying for U.S. job openings must be authorized to work in the United States. All applicants applying for Canadian job openings must be authorized to work in Canada.
Person must have 2 years of administrative experience, preferably 1 of which should be in a law firm. Typing speed MUST be at least 55WPM.
This final example also includes some other key phrases or information to include on your resume. This particular firm is looking for someone that is authorized to work in a given geography. They are also asking for a certain level of skill - typing at 55 words per minute. If you're applying for this job, and you type in excess of 55 WPM, putting this information directly on your resume will significantly increase your chances of being selected for an interview.
About the Author - Discovering Resume Keywords
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